Little Feathers
by Lamia of the Dark
Summary: A collection of drabbles about Levi and Hanji as the parents of a small swarm of ill-behaved brats. (Rated T for swearing, because you know Levi is not going to learn to watch his mouth in front of the kids.)
1. Name

**DISCLAIMER: Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama.**

 **A/N: Yes, another new drabble collection again. Because some of the comments on chapter 9 of "Speak Your Dark Pleasures to Me" got me wondering about what it would be like if Levi and Hanji did have kids. Sorry for the not-so-fluffy beginning, but I felt a few things needed to be established about the situation before getting into them interacting with the children.**

~ Little Feathers ~

It was a good thing Levi was used to going by only his first name, because even three years after his marriage, he was still having a hard time remembering to respond to Zoe. It was not generally done, but also not entirely unheard-of, for a man to take his wife's last name upon marriage. Levi had no particular attachment to the surname of the family he'd been born into, and indeed had been glad to have an excuse to officially be shed of it.

Of course, not much could be said to be "normal" about his relationship with Hanji.

That _oh, shit_ moment when the "Hey, how would you feel about having a kid?" question was followed up with "Well, you'd better decide how you feel because we're having one" was probably the only part of their odd courtship that any of the other soldiers could relate to.

Getting used to the idea that he has a family to come back to after expeditions now was somehow a lot easier of an adjustment for him than getting used to his new name.

~oOo~


	2. Skin

~ Little Feathers ~

Levi was actually kind of relieved to be going on a Survey Corps expedition after nearly a month spent at home with his two hyperactive toddlers and the newborn twins. There was one thing that was bothering him about being back in the field though...

"Hey guys, sorry to bother you in the middle of the night, but can I borrow some lotion?"

"Levi, are you okay?" Oluo asked, suddenly very concerned at the sight of his squad leader. "You look like you're about to shed your skin or something."

Levi scowled at him, but did not answer.

Petra giggled and said, "His skin is dried out because he's been taking twelve baths a day since the twins were born."

"It's not my fault... newborns throw up a lot. And there's two of them. And they never coordinate their attacks to be at the same time."

~oOo~

 **A/N:** Poor Levi. *cackles*


	3. Family

**A/N:** **So yeah, I'm not going to be able to keep this in strictly chronological order, and now that I finally got the twins' names and the backstory for Hanji's parents sorted out in my head, I can continue writing "Little Feathers".**

 **This chapter backtracks to not long after their oldest child is born.**

~ Little Feathers ~

After finding out that Hanji's father was still alive, Levi had insisted that they go see the man and introduce him to his grandchild, despite Hanji's protests that she did not get along with the pompous bastard. ' _The pompous bastard_ ' being the words she used to describe the man should have provided more of a clue, but Levi was infatuated with the idea of having more family members and ignored the warning signs.

Hanji didn't speak of her childhood often, so all that Levi really knew about that part of her life was that she'd been born and raised inside Wall Sina and one of her parents was in the Military Police. He had always assumed that the MP officer had been her father, and went into the meeting thinking he'd be dealing with a soldier. His expectations were shot to hell upon coming face-to-face with Raphael Zoe.

The man was rail-thin and looked as though a strong breeze would snap him in half. He was dressed in a bright pink suit, with accents in the most hideous shade of yellow-green. Before averting his eyes from the fashion disaster of a man, Levi noted that Hanji had definitely gotten her hair color from her father.

Hanji spoke up belatedly with an awkward, "Hi, Dad."

Raphael sniffed imperiously and seemed ready to turn them away at the door until he finally deigned to glance at his daughter and spotted the infant in her arms.

"I suppose you had better come inside," he said, stepping back from the doorway to let them in.

* * *

After some meaningless chatter over tea, during which Levi - despite his intentions to not make himself look like an utter cretin in front of his father-in-law - could not curb his habit of casually cursing during conversation, Raphael finally decided he'd had enough with pretending this was a social call and got to the heart of the matter.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" The tone in which he said _pleasure_ clearly conveyed that he felt exactly the opposite. Without giving his daughter a chance to answer, he continued, "I do believe I asked you not to return unless you were ready to be a proper scion to this family."

He eyed the child in her arms once more, with something like hope. Levi was starting to get the sense that more was wrong here than he'd initially assumed and it was not for just superficial reasons that Hanji and her father did not get along.

"Well, if you'd actually been listening to anything I told you, you'd know that I came here to introduce my husband and our son to you," Hanji snapped bad-temperedly.

Levi had never heard her take such a tone with anyone before, not even Erwin when he was denying her research funding.

"So, now that you're married, I'm assuming you'll be retiring from the Survey Corps to raise the child?" Raphael inquired.

"I'm not retiring!"

"Ah... then your husband will be the one staying home?"

She looked about ready to breathe fire as she replied, "Levi isn't retiring from the Survey Corps, either."

"How are you going to raise a child with both of you in the Survey Corps? You would have been better off not having the baby than marrying such gutter trash, anyway," Raphael sneered.

The baby chose that moment to begin crying, and Hanji looked down at her son in surprise, as if she'd forgotten she was holding him.

"Here, Oscar, go to your daddy," she said - more to warn Levi that she was about to hand the baby to him than anything, since the one-month-old wasn't likely to understand what she was telling him.

* * *

Upon returning to the Survey Corps headquarters, Hanji was called into a meeting with Erwin.

The commander looked highly displeased as he said without preamble, "Hanji, did you break your father's jaw?"

"Well," Hanji replied with a nervous laugh, "I didn't realize I'd hit him _that_ hard..."

"And _why_ did you do it?"

Her expression grew pained.

"He called Levi 'gutter trash'."

Erwin sighed.

"Well, the Military Police are willing to sweep the incident under the rug out of respect for your mother, even though he's filed an official grievance against you. But please make sure you don't repeat such actions in the future."

~oOo~


	4. Legacy

**A/N: This takes place directly after chapter 3.**

~ Little Feathers ~

When she got home from her meeting with the commander, Hanji found her husband waiting impatiently for her.

As soon as she was in the door, Levi asked, "How much trouble are you in?"

"Hello to you, too," she replied teasingly, as she leaned down to kiss him on the cheek. "And to answer your question: none."

"None?" he repeated, nonplussed.

"Nope. The Military Police are covering up the incident, in honor of my mother."

With that bit of information, Levi now knew only three things for certain about Hanji's mother: that she'd been a member of the Military Police, she was no longer alive, and she'd been highly respected among her peers.

After a long pause, he asked, "What happened to your mother?"

"She died when I was eleven... She was killed while defending the king from an assassination attempt." Levi slid his arm around her waist, and Hanji leaned into his side as she continued, "The night after her funeral, I ran away from home to join the military. They knew I was too young, but they let me start training with that year's crop of recruits anyway because of whose daughter I was..."

"So you wanted to follow in your mother's footsteps and join the Military Police?"

"No, I always knew I wanted to join the Survey Corps. You might not understand this, considering your past, but growing up in the innermost district was like growing up in a cage. I never liked it there. I always wanted _out_."

Levi snorted. "That's not hard to understand. I wanted the same thing, only I started in the opposite place."

~oOo~


	5. The Naming of the Firstborn

**A/N:** I wanted the next chapter to be the one about Oscar's first word, which I have had half-written for a long time... but since my muse stubbornly refuses to cough up the other half of that chapter, I figured I might as well give up on that one for now and finish one of the other chapters I had planned.

~ Little Feathers ~

"You know, we still never agreed on what we're going to name him," Hanji commented tiredly as she watched her husband holding their newborn son for the first time.

"Do you really want to have this conversation right now, when you're exhausted from giving birth?" Levi asked, frowning.

Even without her glasses on, she could tell that his expression was one of concern.

" _Yes_. I want us to figure out what our child's name is _before_ I pass out."

Levi sighed. He knew that tone, and it meant there would be hell to pay later if he didn't do what she wanted.

"What about Levi Junior?" he offered lamely. All of the names that he genuinely liked had already been rejected by Hanji.

"... ... you said definitely nothing that I've nicknamed a Titan before, right?"

"Right, but what does that have to do with..." Levi trailed off as the realization hit him. " _Really_ , Hanji?"

"It was a three meter class and it had this grumpy expression... and it was actually members of your squad that started calling it that first..."

Hanji rubbed her eyes and leaned back against the pillows. She really did look like she might pass out any minute now.

Levi waited expectantly, but when his wife failed to offer up any suggestions of her own, he put forth, "What was that name you liked? The one you said was cute, or some shit."

"Hmm... You mean Oscar? But I thought you didn't like that name."

"I changed my mind."

"Alright, then. Oscar it is."

~oOo~


	6. Repeating

~ Little Feathers ~

"What's your mom freaking out about?" Levi asked as he settled the toddler on his hip.

"Ty-tenz," replied Oscar.

"Tch, typical. It's always titans wi-" Levi broke off suddenly and stared wide-eyed at the child in his arms. "Wait, did you just talk?"

"Ty-tenz, ty-tenz!" Oscar repeated, happily showing off his new-found powers of speech.

After that first frozen moment, Levi managed to shake off the shock of this event, and proceeded to attempt to calm his over-reacting spouse.

"Hanji," he said firmly, as he knelt next to his wife - who was collapsed into a puddle on the floor, half-laughing half-sobbing hysterically into the carpet.

Her only response was to move her face from the floor to her husband's lap.

Levi sighed and reached down to rub Hanji's back with one hand. He nearly lost his grip on the toddler as Oscar leaned down to pat Hanji's head. Levi wondered if the child disliked seeing his mother upset, or was just imitating his father's actions.

Even though he knew it would do nothing to help calm her down, Levi couldn't resist saying, "Hey, at least he's repeating after _you_ and not _me_."

~oOo~


	7. Titans! No!

~ Little Feathers ~

"Titans, titans, titans!" two year old Oscar chanted as he tossed little ragdolls of the monsters over the side of the playpen. Which would have been fine if he were the occupant of said playpen, but he was outside of it throwing them in.

Inside the playpen was his one year old sister, Cecelia. Needless to say, she was not happy about the titan invasion, and threw the toys back out nearly as quickly as they came flying in.

Seeing that throwing them in one at a time was not working, Oscar gathered up all five titan dolls in his arms and dumped them on his sister all at once.

"Titans!" he crowed triumphantly.

"NO!" Cecelia yelled as she began to chuck the little monsters back out. "No! No! No!" By the time she got to the fifth one, Oscar had gathered up the others and started to throw them back in once more.

"Look at them playing together. Isn't that cute?" Hanji said, leaning against her husband's shoulder.

"Uh..."

To Levi, it looked like they were fighting and he'd been thinking about stopping them. Having never had a sibling himself (nor having been around children much in general), he didn't know if this was normal behavior or not. Hanji seemed to think it was fine, but he didn't know whether her judgement on this matter was trustworthy, either.

~oOo~


	8. Naming the Twins

~ Little Feathers ~

The naming of their second child had gone much the same way as the first, with the final name chosen being one that had been initially suggested to them by Moblit and which neither Levi nor Hanji had particularly cared for.

During Hanji's third pregnancy, since their two existing children were old enough to talk, the parents decided to consult the little ones on the matter of naming the impending younger sibling.

"Do you kids have any ideas for what we should name your little brother or sister when they're born?"

Cecelia replied succinctly and decisively with her favorite word: "No."

Oscar seemed more up to the challenge.

"Titans!" the little boy suggested excitedly.

Levi scowled. "We are not naming them _Titans_."

He was starting to think that Hanji Junior might have been a better name for Oscar, since the child seemed to share a great many of his mother's personality traits... including her obsession with Titans.

"Hmm. Bird?" Oscar put forth somewhat questioningly, and with much less enthusiasm than his first suggestion.

Levi sighed and added it to the list. It didn't stand much of a chance of actually being used, but at least thinking of potential baby names was keeping Oscar occupied for the moment.

'Potato' and 'Shoelace' were also added to the list before the toddler got bored and wandered off to play with his ragdoll Titans.

When the twins were born, however, Hanji's solution to the Great Naming Debacle was: "You name one and I'll name the other, and whatever we pick are _the_ names - no arguing with each other about them allowed."

Which was how the twins came to be called Katja and Alexandra.

~oOo~

Since some of my dear readers might be confused...

Approximate birth dates for the kids:

Oscar - late 845

Cecelia - late 846 (born 11 months after Oscar)

Katja & Alexandra - mid 848 (1 & 1/2 years after Cecelia)


End file.
